No offence with them but I've been spammed like anything by them. It has happened with lot of my friends. When they install app, it sends texts to ALL contacts without permission prompting to install the app!
What makes it more shady is that they are funded by Bharti Softbank. Bharti manages Airtel, one of the big telcos in India. So maybe, they want more people to use Hike and maybe sell over some data to Airtel. Since they are spamming, their privacy policy needs to be combed over too. Also, the article looks like a PR piece for SF expansion, and to generate American funds.
The intention was and is never to spam at all. There are a couple of screens that allow you to invite your friends. It's pretty clear that users don't pay attention to this, so we've decided to remove this completely.
Curious about this line from the article: "128bit encryption over Wi-Fi." Why only when using wifi? I'm not aware of too much bandwidth overhead involved in exchanging public keys and using AES in some kind of stream-emulation block mode.
My cynical side worries this is some kind of concession to the wireless carriers that want to easedrop on traffic easily. I hope that's not the case! Anyone know?
Oh, there were some genuine technical limitations in implementing it over carrier networks. I'll check the exact details with the team and get back to you. (Most of them are sleeping, it's 3AM here in India.)
We've built SSL on our HAProxy boxes. The concurrent load one can handle with SSL on one of these boxes is significantly less than without. Applying this to mobile traffic further reduces the average concurrent load we can manage on a HAProxy box. Given how quickly we've had to scale up its a technical decision we've taken.
Whatsapp was created because telecom operators have crazy pricing for SMS (5000% profit margin last time I heard). So, people saved on money and limitations (India has a 100 message limit/day) with their data pack.
Hike wants to create an app that goes back to the SMS model where they pay the charges, not the users. They use a mass SMS gateway which is much cheaper. Using mass gateway also means the users must opt out of "Do not disturb" registry, which opens gates for more spam.
Interesting part is, it's backed by a large telco in India[1].
ishansharma|12 years ago
No offence with them but I've been spammed like anything by them. It has happened with lot of my friends. When they install app, it sends texts to ALL contacts without permission prompting to install the app!
And this has been #1 reason I did not install it.
iamshs|12 years ago
sn0v|12 years ago
kbmittal|12 years ago
We learn quick :)
(Creator @hikeapp)
tlack|12 years ago
My cynical side worries this is some kind of concession to the wireless carriers that want to easedrop on traffic easily. I hope that's not the case! Anyone know?
pathik|12 years ago
No ulterior motives. :)
kbmittal|12 years ago
Eventually we'd like to have it all across.
(Creator @hikeapp)
orangethirty|12 years ago
pathik|12 years ago
We'll start looking at that once we hit a certain critical mass, but in much smarter ways. Right now, all focus is on growth and engagement.
PS: I'm the growth hacker at hike.
suhastech|12 years ago
Hike wants to create an app that goes back to the SMS model where they pay the charges, not the users. They use a mass SMS gateway which is much cheaper. Using mass gateway also means the users must opt out of "Do not disturb" registry, which opens gates for more spam.
Interesting part is, it's backed by a large telco in India[1].
[1] "a 50:50 Bharti Softbank joint venture"
kbmittal|12 years ago
Short answer: No. We won't monetize through ads
(Creator @hikeapp)